Many meeting or event spaces, such as in smart buildings, are instrumented with technology that enables smart energy management, wireless networking, and autonomous systems, among other things. Instrumentation of these spaces can often take the form of internet connected devices (Internet-of-Things devices, TOT devices). TOT devices can monitor room characteristics such as temperature or humidity, can monitor WiFi strength and internet connectivity, can monitor sound levels such as at a music venue, and for a wide variety of other purposes. Many commercial spaces such as conference rooms in an office building already receive or could shortly receive 5G coverage from a network of distributed small cells, increasing bandwidth and low latency and enabling the use of even more instrumentation such as TOT devices in such spaces.
Point-to-point communication. e.g., voice communication, is widely used for a variety of applications, and is often carried out in commercial spaces such as conference rooms office buildings. In such systems, a presenter, speaker, or other such source of audio signal is positioned at a location or a plurality of locations within a conference room. The conference room can have a central microphone or other such audio sensor that captures, to varying degrees of quality, audio signals from the audio source. The microphone can be connected, coupled, operably coupled, or otherwise configured to transmit audio signal to a processor. The processor can receive the audio signal and communicate it to a device of a remote user, viewer, or other such participant of the point-to-point communication. For example, the ubiquity of internet-based communication platforms, such as Webex, Google Hangouts, and Skype, has enabled remote user devices to join meetings from any global location. However, remote users still suffer from a loss of immersion in comparison to the experience of attending a meeting in person. Typically, the remote user joins the meeting using a speakerphone and/or a laptop computer, and their voice is relayed into the meeting room using a single speaker. If two-way video communication is enabled, only a single viewpoint is generally available for the remote user from a single fixed camera, and the audio is not spatially linked to this visual viewpoint. In addition, statically positioned microphones often cannot capture audio from the audio source that is optimized with regard to a variety of characteristics or attributes, such as feedback, tininess, echo, This configuration results in a sub-optimal experience in which the remote user has a detached presence, and the illusion that they are “in the room” is rarely maintained.
Audio quality is of import in relation to the user experience in conjunction with voice communication. Poor quality audio undermines any attempts at effective communication. Furthermore, full immersion by the remote user can only be attained if the audio viewpoint matches the video.
Traditional methods of obtaining audio from a single location within a meeting room, which is then sent to the remote user(s), employ a single microphone (monaural) or two-microphone (stereo) mix from microphones onboard a single device. However, the efficacy of this approach is limited. If the audio source is nearer/farther from the active microphone(s), the sound levels will change and the audio source could be too loud or too quiet. While this change in sound levels could be overcome with auto-gain levelling schemes, the presence of other interfering audio or noise sources will cause these schemes to fail. Thus, the audio quality of many voice communication sessions, such as the audio quality provided to remote user in a meeting, is less than desired which, in turn, diminishes the overall user experience.
Therefore, there is a long-felt need in the industry for an apparatus, method, and computer program code associated with combining/mixing distributed audio in such a way that audio quality is enhanced in a manner that is both computationally inexpensive and does not require large bandwidth, while being robust when used in a variety of installation environments.